1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pile forming apparatus of the cloth moving type, capable of moving at least cloth or woven fabrics in a terry loom.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A terry loom for weaving woven fabrics having piles such as a terry towel includes, in general, a pile forming apparatus which can vary the positional relation between a reed and a cloth fell, that is, the positional relation between a so-called fast pick position (first pick position) for forming pile by beating a weft toward the cloth fell (i.e. a beating position for beating the weft to bring it into contact with the cloth fell) and a so-called loose pick position (second pick position) for just moving wefts up to a position at a certain distance from the cloth fell (i.e. a half beating position for beating wefts to move them up to a position at a certain distance from the cloth fell).
As an example of the pile forming apparatus of this kind, U.S. Pat. No. 5,392,817 (Japanese Patent Application Public Disclosure (KOKAI) No. 5(1993)-156546) discloses a cloth moving type pile forming apparatus in which woven fabrics are moved with respect to a reed by means of a cloth moving member. In this apparatus as disclosed, the following system is employed for moving the woven fabrics. The first swing lever (a roller lever) is swung by a negative motion cam mechanism which is driven in synchronism with rotation of the main shaft of a loom. The swing motion of this first swing lever is then transmitted to a coupling hook detachably connected with the first swing lever, further transmitted to the second swing lever (driving lever) through a sliding ring connected with the above coupling hook, and finally transmitted to a woven fabric table as the cloth moving member by the second swing lever.
In the pile weaving operation according to the above prior art system, the first swing lever and the coupling hook are connected with each other, thereby moving the cloth moving member in the warp running direction (referred to as "front and back direction" hereinafter), from the fast pick position to the loose pick position or vice versa according to a weaving plan or design. With this, the cloth fell is moved from the fast pick position to the loose pick position or vice versa according to a weaving plan or design.
Contrary to this, in the weaving operation other than the pile weaving operation (for example ordinary cloth weaving, border weaving), the first swing lever is detached from the coupling hook, thereby holding the cloth moving member and the cloth fell in the fast pick position. With this, the pile length would be kept almost zero.
In the prior art system as described above, however, when the first swing lever and the coupling hook are detached from each other, it is required to additionally provide a stopper which can receive and stand a load imposed to the entire system, for instance, the load in the form of the tension applied to the warp and the woven fabric as well, the reaction force caused by the beating motion, and so forth. This results in enlargement in the scale of the apparatus.
Therefore, in the cloth moving type pile forming apparatus, it is desirable to make the scale of the apparatus as small as possible.